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Friday, May 19, 2017

Politics of prisoner-hostage swap

On many occasions since the outbreak of the
ongoing Boko Haram crisis in Nigeria, the terrorists have done what has always
proved their links with some much more sophisticated terrorist groups elsewhere
from which they apparently not only learn combat strategies but also learn the politics
of negotiations with constituted authorities.

Being a local terror group composed of grossly
misinformed gang leaders and ridiculously ill-informed foot soldiers, the way
it engages the federal government in the intermittent rounds of negotiations
over the abducted Chibok girls, for instance, further confirms the existence of
such links.

Besides, the terrorists realize that,
contrary to what obtains elsewhere, the life of a Nigerian hostage, whether a police
officer or soldier abducted at battlefront, or any other Nigerian for that
matter, isn’t important enough to prompt the government to engage in serious
efforts to rescue or get him released. Instead, the value of his life, as far
as the successive Nigerian governments are concerned, is determined by the
amount of local and international outcry his abduction provokes. That’s why
whenever they manage to capture a soldier or police officer, for instance, they
never bother to offer him for a swap deal to retrieve their fellow terrorists
captured by government forces, instead, they would simply slaughter him or blow
his brains out him in front of a video camera and release the video clip.

Perhaps, they apparently accord more value to
the ordinary people they abduct and keep, for they seek to indoctrinate them and/or
keep them as slaves or human shields. In fact, they had perhaps initially intended
to keep the hundreds of Chibok school girls they abducted that way, however
when their abduction began to attract global media attention that also provoked
a global outcry supported by demands from some world political leaders and
celebrities for their immediate release, the terrorists began to regard them as
high-value hostages to blackmail the federal government into compromising for a
possible prisoner-hostage
swap deal.

Incidentally, though in the aftermath of their
abduction, there had been a public outcry and a campaign for their release in
the country, the ensuing global outcry that actually generated global momentum
for the campaign attracted many opportunists who infiltrated the campaign and
have ever since then been exploiting it for personal interests, which explains
the absence of the campaigners’ involvement in the process of facilitating the
release of the girls released so far.

Now, the recent prisoner-hostage swap deal
between the federal government and the terror group has exposed some interesting
instances of mediocrity in government’s handling of the process that culminated
in the deal in view of the calibre of the Boko Haram prisoners it swapped for
82 Chibok girls. Though the federal government admitted that the girls were
swapped for some few Boko Haram prisoners, hardly anyone suspected that the
Boko Haram members released under the deal were, or at least, included some of
their top commanders e.g. the notorious so-called Abud-dar-da’a, as it turned
out afterwards. Yet, in a display of sheer defiance, and just a few days
following his release, he appeared in a Boko Haram propaganda video celebrating
his reunion with his fellow terrorists in Sambisa and vowing to resume his role
in the group’s terror operations in the country.

Also, though it’s absolutely understandable
that, as far as the parents of the abducted girls are concerned, nothing should
be considered too valuable to be swapped for their abducted daughters, yet, the
federal government should have resisted the pressure to settle for just 82
girls in exchange for some notorious Boko Haram gang leaders like Abud-dar-da’a
and his fellow terrorists released under the deal. After all, inasmuch as the
Boko Haram leadership and negotiators were
certainly equally desperate to retrieve their fellow terrorists, the federal
government negotiators should have pushed for proportionate concessions by the
terrorists. For instance, they should have insisted on the release of most of,
if not all, the other abductees who had been abducted before the Chibok girls,
and have ever since then been languishing in the misery of the terrorists’
captivity.

By the way, sometimes one finds it hard to
dismiss the growing suspicion that those non-Chibok Nigerian abductees were largely
forgotten simply because they weren’t “lucky” to belong to the ethno-religious
backgrounds privileged enough to attract similar amount of sympathy and prompt a
similarly sustained campaign for their release by local activists and the international
community.

Anyway, another instance that exposed mediocrity
in government’s handling of Boko Haram prisoners was the fact that while Boko
Haram terrorists seek to, and indeed actually, indoctrinate and radicalize some
or perhaps many of the people they abduct, it’s clear that the Nigerian
government isn’t committed to conducting serious ideological rehabilitation and
deradicalization program for Boko Haram prisoners in its custody. Abud-dar-da’a’s
case and some of the abducted Chibok girls shown in another propaganda video rejecting
the offer to be released under the swap deal, further confirm this observation.
Whereas in some other countries equally affected by similar wave of terror
attracts, governments coordinate with qualified Muslim scholars and other
relevant experts to engage captured terrorists in purely intellectual
discussions in order to clarify the religious injunctions they (i.e.
terrorists) misperceive and misapply. And there have been many success stories of
many terrorists renouncing terrorism and rejoining the mainstream Muslim
community.